Friday, June 14, 2013

ALSO’s 18th Annual Walk for Peace

This past Saturday, June 8th
for the 18th consecutive year, hundreds of people from across
Chicago joined with the Alliance of Local Service Organizations (ALSO) to Walk for Peace. The
theme of this year’s Walk was "Partners
Against Violence in Our Streets, Homes and Schools: Men and Women Working
Together," and called for allies, partnerships and power sharing to
address violence in all its forms.

This event provided a space to not only
give voice to some of the experiences of violence taking place in Chicago but
also allowed for opportunities to celebrate good works and continued efforts
around safety and peace.

Dominant media and culture lends
itself to the notion of separateness between people, groups, and communities. It
is up to us to walk away from this notion.Respectfully acknowledging our
commonalities and differences as human beings along with exploring the root
causes of violence through a lens of justice, will assist us on this journey. Demonstrating
safety in the spaces of violence, partnerships in the wake of separateness, and
power sharing in places of oppression will help us all walk towards peace.

Want to learn more about ALSO?: The mission of ALSO (www.also-chicago.org) is to end violence in the homes and streets of communities nationwide. Incorporated in 1998, ALSO was created to coordinate services for youth and families in the Logan Square community on Chicago’s Northwest Side. Becoming aware of the devastating impact of community violence on those families ALSO began to take action by implementing prevention programs to end street violence. In 2007, ALSO expanded its violence prevention and intervention efforts to include intimate partner violence. By working to end violence more broadly, ALSO began to see connections between violence on the streets and violence in the home.

Today, ALSO works both locally and nationally to end violence. By expanding its reach, ALSO informs its national work from a local perspective and brings knowledge and best practices from around the country to our neighborhoods in Chicago.